Philippine Red Cross honors Dick Gordon as volunteer on Global Volunteers Day

AS the planet celebrates Worldwide Volunteers Working day on December 5, 2022, the Philippine Pink Cross (PRC) honors its chairman and CEO, Richard J. Gordon, as a volunteer. Gordon commenced volunteering at the Pink Cross at youthful age, in 1968. He marks 54 a long time of remaining a Crimson Cross volunteer this 12 months.

Volunteerism probably runs in Gordon’s loved ones. To be precise, he could possibly have “inherited” the trait from his mother. At a youthful age, he witnessed his mother deliver care for lots of orphaned or abandoned little ones. It was also his mom, herself a Red Cross leader, who launched Gordon to what would be, under his leadership, the leading humanitarian corporation in the country.

Prior to starting to be PRC’s chairman and CEO in 2004, Gordon as town mayor of Olongapo led around 8,000 volunteers from all walks of everyday living to transform Subic Bay into a distinctive economic zone immediately after the termination of US Naval Base’s functions there. When Mt. Pinatubo erupted in 1991, Gordon was among the the important governing administration officials who led the reaction and recovery of Central Luzon.

As chairman and CEO of PRC, Gordon would lead noteworthy humanitarian responses, these kinds of as the Ginsaugon landslide response, the Tremendous Ferry reaction, and the Supertyphoon Haiyan reaction, which is the Purple Cross and Red Crescent Movement’s most important humanitarian reaction to date.

Gordon’s brand name of volunteerism and appreciate for his men and women was the moment again demonstrated when he worked tirelessly with his colleagues in 2020 to fast set up molecular laboratories capable of automatic testing of Covid-19, so that the region would be capable to detect virus transmission and isolate these infected.

Gordon collaborated with his colleagues at PRC in building the principle of and launching the barangay-dependent Red Cross 143 volunteer community, which is what would make PRC ready to assemble information from the ground and react quickly in disasters and emergencies.

Gordon’s affect as a Red Cross leader is much-reaching. His colleagues at the Pink Cross and Crimson Crescent Motion and governing administration catastrophe supervisors look for his knowledge from his 54 decades of encounter as a volunteer and chief of the PRC.